When you sit on the patio of the month-old second incarnation of chef
Suzanne Goin‘s A.O.C., there’s no doubt you’re in Los Angeles. Plenty of space between tables, a cool breeze, both a fireplace and space heaters in a town where the thermostat rarely drops below 65 degrees. The decade-old concept (Mediterranean-inflected small plates) has made the transition with grace, certainly benefiting from the spiffy, new surroundings, not to mention some killer house-made focaccia. The real news–that’s not really news at all if you’ve ever eaten at a Suzanne Goin restaurant–is that there’s salad on the menu: Quinoa with root vegetables, winter squash, tumeric, and mint; a mighty Indian-inflected chopped chicken salad with curried cauliflower, spinach, yogurt, lentils, raisins and almonds. This is what you should be eating.

Yeah, I know, this is L.A., where models, actors, and various people who look like models and actors subsist primarily off leafy greens (dressing on the side, please). But this is also Suzanne Goin, Salad Queen.

“I just love eating salad. It’s a hard thing to make, and I love when it gets respect,” Goin said by phone recently from her Hollywood Hills home, where last year I filmed a video of her making a seemingly simple salad of arugula, grapes, and almonds. Now, when I asked if she could give me something like
The Suzanne Goin Salad Manifesto, she had more news: Her editor had asked her to write one for the forthcoming A.O.C. Cookbook, to be released October 29. Follow these three tenets, and you’ll be on the way to Goin-style salad success:

1. Texture Sure, quinoa or pumpkin seeds add texture to a salad. But what about something more subtle? In A.O.C.’s Indian Chopped Chicken Salad–a spinach, romaine, and endive combination that Goin describes as “the most complicated salad ever”–Goin says she looks for textural variations within the different types of greens. “We cut the endive on the bias and you get little slivers of crunch that give it a different feeling from the romaine,” she says. “The spinach gives you that hearty, deep-green iron-y feeling in your mouth.”

2. Balance This is basic, she says, but important to remember: “You need a balance of acid to oil. You need oil for a good mouth feel and enough acid so that the salad doesn’t end up bland.” In her arugula, blood orange, tangerine, date, and pecorino salad, citrus brings the acid, while the flavors of the oil-slicked arugula leaves and sharp cheese linger in your mouth after you’ve devoured the thing. And, please, apply dressing in increments to avoid ending up with a soggy mess.

3. Multitasking In that same Indian Chopped Chicken Salad, Goin uses curried cauliflower to act both as a tasty ingredient and as a dressing contributor. “The oil and the spices from the cauliflower dress the greens as well,” says Goin. “All the flavors end up melding together, which is what I love about eating a plate of Indian food.”